


linked

by erobororo



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6574114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erobororo/pseuds/erobororo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hide had always loved Kaneki’s hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	linked

**Author's Note:**

> Reuploaded because I deleted my old account. Prompted by an inbox message from anon. Short and (bitter)sweet.

If ever given the chance, he’d have said it started right from the beginning.

The boy was sly, using his companion’s undiscerning eye to his advantage to get in as many “accidental” brushing of the hands as possible. But that seemingly cunning advantage was only proportional to his opponent; the others could see right through his ploys, and he had to all but physically retaliate to keep cruel schoolchildren from unleashing vulgarities like hounds let loose on a hunt. His opponent never fought back. Didn’t quite have the claws for it.

At the time.

No, at the time Kaneki’s hands were closer to soft paws than calloused talons. They were bred for gentle, sometimes discrete, turns of pages upon pages upon pages, familiarized with the inward curl of fingers so instinctively you could place a book between them at any moment. It seemed the other boy treated everything like handling a precious novel, and it surprised him that even after deliberate hand grabs in excited times, all that would be returned were tender squeezes. But, he supposed it was to be expected of the boy whose lifeline to such affections were severed much too early. So he silently treasured what little reciprocated touches he could. He hoped he would rub off on him.

And perhaps he did, as one particular New Year’s Eve had him believe. The two of them walked side-by-side to the shrine, a dialogue carried mostly by himself of the clubs they should join in high school, when their hands (actually) accidentally bumped with each other. He exaggeratedly linked their hands together with a shrill darling’s voice, expecting a flustered Kaneki to pull away immediately, as the boy usually did after unexpected gestures. But there was no equally showy withdrawal, nor jab to the side in playful retaliation. It was his own turn to be caught off-guard as warmth flooded between his fingers, laced in place as they strolled past a row of vendors before finally, slowly, letting go. There were no words of it then, and none in the following months. He had to be patient.

Kaneki may not have had a voice, but growing from timid boy to young man, his hands came to speak volumes. They gave monologues below clouded skies, cast open to future prospects with fervor to make up for a hesitant mouth. In time they held lengthy conversations with Hide’s own, and those hands told him everything. Atop isolated grassy knolls, under the table in the back of the library. On the floor of his apartment. Kaneki’s hands spoke to him until the sun rose, but they never seemed to lose their voice––

––until That Day.

Every moment beyond that incident, those once eager paws stopped reaching out. Their conversations barely kept past moonrise, and eventually stopped altogether. It seemed the two of them were receding in time, Hide trying as many creative advances to feel to just speak with Kaneki again. To have those hands on him in any way. Those hands with fingers that still curved for a book’s support, but twitched in ways he’d never seen. Rough red marks around the knuckles he knew were never there before, and he wondered why then, of all times, his friend’s hands tried to lie. He already knew, either of them just had to say it, but of course that never happened. It was never that simple. Kaneki was never that simple.

And yet, when the young man went missing and his only option for meeting was in front of wanted posters, he could only affirm to himself how much the disappearing act made sense.

In the following months of separation, he dreamt of those hands. Dreamt of the pulse thrumming at their fingertips, of the perfect imperfections he had mapped out from the beginning, of the winding system of life attached to them that made up the person he swore to protect. The loss of touch wasn’t as unbearable as the panic that he wasn’t fulfilling his promise. But it certainly didn’t keep the loneliness at bay. 

“Rabbits die of loneliness, you know,” he might have said in their next encounter, had the circumstances been any different.

At least, he thanked kami-sama, dwelling on a single brief selfishness, that he didn’t have to be alone in death. He only wished he didn’t have to leave Kaneki, whose hands wasted no time to familiarize with his clothes, his hair, his skin. It had been so long, he mentally cursed himself for almost forgetting the sensation. They had never felt so worn in texture, so taut and dry, practically weathered down to blood and bone. He guessed there was good reason for leaving the paws behind for claws. But he sighed as they kneaded into him, the talons nowhere to be found as the tenderness from a year prior returned. He knew these hands, and they knew him, wrapping up his entire being enough to make the sudden excruciating heat feel like a winter’s morning.

A nail tickled his skin to write out the words he had so desperately wanted to convey, and he could only smile, mustering enough strength to trace the same phrase along Kaneki’s back.

 

 

 

 

Hide loved Kaneki’s hands.

He had always loved them.

And they had always loved him in return.


End file.
